


finally made my way home

by kaspbee (fillory)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Domesticity, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Fluff, Getting Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:47:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26414404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fillory/pseuds/kaspbee
Summary: “I have to tell you something.”Richie braced himself. “Yeah?”“About how I feel,” Eddie continued. “The way I feel about you, and living here. With you. I need to tell you.” He smoothed his hair behind his ears, then stood abruptly.Richie stood, too. Couldn’t give Eddie the height advantage, not in a situation like this—although Richie was becoming less and less confident that he knew what the situation was at all. “How you feel?”“Yes.” Eddie took a deep breath. “It’s like… otters.”Or: domesticity after the storm, otter metaphors, and confessions long overdue.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 250





	finally made my way home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reechie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reechie/gifts).



> This is a birthday gift for the wonderful Ree [@REECHIE](https://twitter.com/REECHlE)! Happy birthday, my dear! 🥳🎉
> 
> Title from "Richie Tozier" by Ok Otter. Shout out to Vienna Teng for letting me listen to "Stray Italian Greyhound" on loop while writing this. All my love to Meg [@edskasper](https://twitter.com/edskasper)/[fallingthorns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallingthorns/pseuds/fallingthorns) for encouraging me.

“Richie,” Eddie yelled, his voice echoing from their front entryway all the way to where Richie sat in his office playing Solitaire. “Richie, we need to talk.”

Clattering from the kitchen. Eddie opening and slamming drawers in what sounded like a frenzy as Richie’s shoulders hiked up to his ears. This was it: the day Eddie told him he wanted to move out. They’d been living together for about a month, Eddie flying out to Richie’s Chicago apartment before the ink had dried on his divorce papers, and Richie had been waiting for him to finally tire of him for just as long.

It was different now from when they were kids. Richie was keenly aware that any goodwill he had sown from being, in his mother’s words, _cute as a wink_ had vanished when he came out the other side of puberty still spotted and striped with stretch marks from his thighs to his shoulders. The fact that Eddie was here at all was a miracle. And from the sounds of him stomping down the hallway, one that Richie had just about used up.

“I need to talk to you,” Eddie said again, appearing in the open doorway with his brow furrowed. His tie was loose around his neck and his sleeves were—his sleeves were rolled up to bare his forearms, which was just unfair. If Richie was about to have his heart all but broken, Eddie should at least have the decency to look ugly doing it.

As if he could look ugly doing anything, Richie thought gloomily. He pushed back from his desk resignedly and swiveled around to face Eddie. “Yeah?”

Eddie’s brow pinched further. “Did I interrupt your…” He glanced past Richie at the monitor. “‘Work’?”

“Nah. I think the dealer’s cheating, anyway.”

“The deal—sure.” Eddie sighed. “Can you come into the living room with me? Please?”

“Sure, bud!” Richie said, then winced when Eddie turned to walk back down the hallway. Too chipper, too obvious. Always too obvious.

When Richie had signed the lease for this apartment years ago, it had been as bare and empty as his life had seemed at the time; now, the walls of the hallway were full of photos, framed and everything. Bill and Audra at a movie premier, Audra looking radiant and Bill hilariously uncomfortable in his tuxedo. Bev and Kay kissing under the mistletoe at Ben’s cabin; Bev and Kay kissing over a waterfall at their honeymoon. Mike, Stan, and Patty beaming at the photographer from their front porch the day Mike moved in with them for good. An ancient photo of Richie and Sandy posing in front of the radio station they interned at, back before Richie got famous and Sandy went off to travel the world. A newer photo of Richie and Eddie flipping off the Bean together.

Richie supposed when Eddie moved out they’d have to divide up the photos like assets in a contentious divorce. Eddie had practice with that, after all. Or maybe Eddie would take them all; it had been his idea to put them up in the first place, he had bought the frames, and without his insistence on making the apartment feel like a home, Richie would still be living in the empty bachelor pad he had for the past decade. They hadn’t signed a prenup for their cohabitation. Maybe, if he asked nicely, Eddie might leave him with the scans.

Their living room was even worse, truly lived in, Eddie’s shoes next to Richie’s in the foyer, their coats hung together on the rack. They shared a Netflix subscription. The doorway to their kitchen had lines marking their heights scrawled in pencil over the soft yellow paint Eddie had chosen, which Richie had begged him to stand still for in the name of Eddie maybe, someday, finally growing taller than him. A decades-late growth spurt that Eddie sometimes stood on their coffee table in socked feet to pretend had happened; the two of them laughing when he slipped on the latest _Out_ and Richie had to catch him.

“Here.” Eddie shuffled him over to sit on the couch, a relic from Richie’s very first apartment he refused to get rid of that Eddie had stubbornly covered with two couch covers and a throw before being willing to sit on. Maybe he’d take those with him, too.

“So, Eds,” Richie said, once Eddie had sat next to him and was looking at him expectantly. As if it were Richie, not Eddie, who had called this house meeting. “You wanted to talk?”

Eddie startled, face flushing. “Right. It’s. I have to tell you something.”

Richie braced himself. “Yeah?”

“About how I feel,” Eddie continued. “The way I feel about you, and living here. With you. I need to tell you.” He smoothed his hair behind his ears, then stood abruptly.

Richie stood, too. Couldn’t give Eddie the height advantage, not in a situation like this—although Richie was becoming less and less confident that he knew what the situation was at all. “How you feel?”

“Yes.” Eddie took a deep breath. “It’s like… otters,” he managed.

“Otters?” Richie repeated.

“Yeah, like—you know how otters hold hands?”

“…No?” Richie couldn’t say he’d spent any amount of time thinking about otters and what they did with their hands, although he was wondering now if that was a mistake. Eddie’s face was getting redder by the second.

“Well, they do. I read about it in _National Geographic_ last week. They hold hands when they fall asleep because they don’t want to drift away in the night and fucking—lose each other, okay? That’s how I feel about you.”

“You want to hold my hand… like otters?”

“Yes!” Eddie snapped and pointed at him rudely, like hailing a waiter from across a crowded restaurant in the most obnoxious way possible, and Richie had to suppress a hysterical giggle. “Always! Every fucking day! But more importantly, I don’t want to lose you.”

“Eddie—”

“Not again,” Eddie interrupted, and the fire in his eyes was settling now into something more vulnerable, a warmth rather than the furious blaze of earlier. He was wearing an expression Richie distantly recognized as the same one he’d worn whenever he pushed his way into Richie’s space in the clubhouse, shoving at him to move over in the hammock even as he hooked his knees comfortably over Richie’s and nestled into his side, meeting his eyes with an almost-shyness too tender for thirteen-year-old boys to claim. Eddie seemed to have gained confidence in the face of Richie’s utter confusion, and now he looked at Richie like he had all the secrets in the world and was thrilled to be able to share them with him.

Richie swallowed once, hard, as Eddie stepped up into his space and gently took his hand in his own.

“I want to do this”—Eddie lifted their hands to hover in the space between their hearts and slowly laced their fingers together, palm to palm—“until the ocean itself couldn’t tear us apart. Do you understand now?”

Richie couldn’t help himself: He kissed him. Their joined hands against their chests, the beating of his heart rabbit-quick in his throat, in his ears; he leaned down and took Eddie’s mouth with his own, slotting their lips together and closing his eyes. Eddie kissed him back, sweetly, as if he’d somehow been expecting it. Richie could feel him smiling against his mouth—because Eddie was kissing him, _really kissing him_ , the culmination of every childhood wish and aching adult longing.

Richie gasped a bit and Eddie opened his mouth, too, and suddenly they were making out for real and their hands were in Eddie’s hair, still tangled together, and Eddie shifted his other arm over Richie’s shoulder to pull him impossibly closer, and it was impossibly good. Slick, and soft, and minty like Eddie’s favorite brand of chapstick, because _his lips_ were on _Richie’s mouth_.

“Eddie,” Richie murmured. They still hadn’t let go. “Eds, marry me.”

Eddie pulled back. His mouth was red and his cheeks were the most beautiful blush pink Richie had ever seen, his freckles dark over his nose. Richie wanted to kiss them, each one individually. He thought maybe he’d wanted to kiss them since he was twelve years old.

“No,” he said. “Fuck you, you can’t propose now.”

Richie’s heart sank back down, from his throat to his chest all the way to the ground. Of course not; they weren’t even dating, much less in _proposal_ territory—

But Eddie was still talking. “You can’t propose to me,” he said, sweeping their hands together through the air emphatically like he’d forgotten he had Richie’s as well as his own. “ _I’m_ proposing to _you_. I hadn’t even gotten to that part yet because you’re fucking impatient, as usual. You just had to kiss me before I could finish.”

Richie gaped. “I’m sorry?”

“You should be, you jerk. You always steal my limelight.” Eddie stepped back and slipped his free hand into his pocket, then knelt. Richie’s heart leapt right back up to his throat. “I know it’s soon. Too soon to be practical, really. We’ve only been living together a month and you didn’t even know I love you until five minutes ago.”

“You love me?” Richie yelped.

Eddie laughed, a bright sound. “I’m sorry, were my otter metaphors not clear enough for you? Yeah, Rich, I love you.”

Richie inhaled shakily and had to press his free hand to his eyes to stop himself from tearing up at the words. “Alright,” he said. His voice cracked. “That’s, uh, good. I love you, too.”

“I know, doofus.” But Eddie’s grin, when Richie lowered his hand to look down at him, was wider and more brilliant than he’d ever seen. He looked settled. Confident. Like hearing the words made him feel as good, as safe as Richie did when Eddie said them first. “Now stop interrupting me.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n,” Richie croaked in the best Long John Silver he could muster, sketching a weak salute.

“Trashmouth,” Eddie said seriously. It sounded like _darling_ from his mouth. “I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to hold your hand until we both die and the turtle god eats us and shits us out into the cosmos, and I want to still be holding your hand when we’re turtle shit floating through space.”

“Romantic,” said Richie. He couldn’t even manage to make it sound sarcastic.

“Thanks.” Eddie shot him a quick grin before continuing. “I know it’s soon,” he said again, “but I’ve loved you since I was ten. I don’t ever want to let you go. Will you marry me?”

He was still holding Richie’s hand. Eddie was proposing and he was _still holding Richie’s hand_ , and as Richie nodded shakily he realized Eddie held an engagement band in his other hand.

“Yes,” he said, in case it wasn’t clear. “Yeah, yes, _yes_ , of course I’ll marry you. Shit, Eds!”

And then Eddie was laughing and sliding the ring onto his hand—his left hand, the one he’d been holding this entire time, and _did he plan even that?_ —and then he was standing again and leaning up on his toes, into Richie’s chest, and they were kissing. Hot, open-mouthed right from the outset, and somehow even better than before. Richie thought if each new kiss was going to be better than the last, he might die sooner rather than later.

“Wait,” he said. “Wait, Eds, does this mean—”

“What?” Eddie drew back crossly. “Yes, whatever, come on. I want to kiss you.”

“Does this mean”—Richie started laughing, interrupting his own punchline—“you’re my _significant otter?”_

Eddie sighed enormously and thumped Richie’s chest with their linked hands, but he couldn’t hide his smile. Richie had been catching him in unwitting smiles forever; he knew now he’d be doing it forevermore. “Yeah, sweetheart. I guess it does.”

**Author's Note:**

> Before this I hadn't written in about a year, so feedback is really appreciated. Catch me on twitter [@kaspbee](https://twitter.com/kaspbee)!


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